Once upon a time the Windows logo was a flag – back in the day when the launch of a new operating system was something to celebrate. A look back at how Microsost’s Windows launches have changed since 1985 – and how Windows 8 could be the last one.

If Windows 8 truly is a pretty good operating system burdened by a poor marketing design choice, then you might think a little app that undoes that design choice should set everything right. Two such apps already exist, either one of which could make you reconsider the whole notion that Windows 8 is like a catastrophe imagined by Mondrian.

Microsoft never has had to be the innovator in a given market to succeed. More often than not, it has followed a successful path set forth by a predecessor, only with a bit more capital and marketing panache. This time, the competition has left a clear set of footprints for Microsoft to follow. And if Microsoft follows that path precisely…

The latest language from the company once identified for its programming languages seeks to bring a higher class of developer into the Web apps space, without changing the foundation of the Web… even if such a change wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

“Logging onto” Windows is something a great many users don’t do. Let’s face it, do we log onto our phones? If we’re okay with our phones pretending they’re us while they move around, why would we need to be protective about devices that mostly stay in one place? This is a point of view that Microsoft, over the course of…

Anywhere in the world, the fastest way to make anything popular is to ban it. Certainly Iran, which actually is an Internet infrastructure provider and which has by far the largest Internet using population in the Middle East, undoubtably knows that. So when Iran is handed a gold mine like The Innocence of Muslims, what should it do?

If Windows 8 succeeds, it will be because its users come to embrace three of its exclusive elements as critical to the way they work and the things they do. Here we address the first of those elements: Windows 8’s approach to sharing media.

Just five years’ time, and already the tech press is declaring the iPhone era waning. Or more accurately, some elements of the tech press weren’t too thrilled by the iPhone 5 announcement, and the rest fell asleep. Boredom is as contagious as the plague (just ask anyone at CNN). But the claim says a lot more about the tech press than it does…

The formal release of the final Windows Server 2012 this week sets up Microsoft for a showdown in the enterprise datacenter with its newly re-armored arch rival VMware. At issue is whether an operating system based on a consumer-grade client belongs in a server that runs thousands of virtual machines at one time.

The basic premise of Windows To Go sounds like it escaped from an alternate universe: Now you can take Windows home with you from work, and run it on your living room PC. “That’s crazy,” you might respond, “it’s already on my living room PC!” But this is Windows 8, which is so, so different that the ability to create take-home, bootable OS…

Postponing operating system upgrades until the last possible moment, and even forestalling new PC purchases, is common among Windows veterans. Only recently has the ancient Windows XP lost its position as the most popular version of Microsoft’s operating system. This attitude enabled many of us to skip over Windows Me and Vista, and there are signs…

At some point, you will need the next version of Windows. But that’s down the road a ways. The question Windows users need to ask before October 26 is whether you need Windows 8 right now? The answer begins with “that depends…”

Today’s failure in the Senate to end debate on the latest cybersecurity bill and bring it to a final vote will likely mean no action on the issue until next year. And the debate over how government agencies should share critical security information with private software and services firms has resulted in splits in allegiance on both sides of the…

The U.S. Senate is about to deliberate a highly revised cybersecurity bill – one that last weekend won the endorsement of President Obama. The current version of the bill no longer contains measures that would essentially declare any device that may at some point contain critical government information – even via the public cloud – as subject…

“Big Data” is the technology that is supposedly reshaping the data center. Sure, the data center isn’t as fun a topic as the iPad, but without the data center supplying the cloud with apps, iPads wouldn’t nearly as much fun either. Big Data is also the nucleus of a new and growing industry, injecting a much-needed shot of adrenaline in…

The world once debated whether Internet Explorer’s dominance in Web browsers was fair in the wake of Microsoft’s conduct against Netscape. As part of its 2009 settlement with the European Union, Microsoft offered to give new Windows users in Europe a choice of default browsers, rather than just leave them with Internet Explorer and make them…

Let’s be clear about what was unveiled Monday afternoon by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in San Francisco: It wasn’t Office 2013 – not really. That would be the conventionally installed software application that could now be described as “offline mode.” Rather, what Ballmer demonstrated was Office 365 incorporating what it should have had to begin…